I saw her walk by and her red hair glistening in the sunlight reminded me of sweet cherries on a warm summer evening. I say "glistening in the sunlight," but it's more like "her hair reflected the sparse, almost dim, fluorescent lighting of the school library." She sat down, of course not noticing me at the other end of the table. Perhaps she didn’t see me because it's been too long since she got a haircut, and her bangs are overgrown and cover her eyes. Yeah that sounds right. She took out pencils, pens, markers, highlighters, I almost expected her to pull out a full size easel, but then I realized it wouldn't fit in her small grey leather backpack. Instead of an easel, she pulled out a simple, plain, ordinary, spiral notebook. I was almost disappointed. She opened it and scribbled down what I assumed to be some notes for a class that's so advanced for me I wouldn't even think they offered it at this school. She wrote intricate paragraphs, put bullet points, and drew a data table. In my head I said "That’s gotta be overkill, no class is that hard," but what do I know? I thought about the only time I've ever talked to her, I was in this very same library and I wore my brand new Bon Jovi t-shirt for the first time. She saw it, she didn't compliment it OUT LOUD, if we’re getting technical, but she looked at me and gave a polite nod that I took to say, "The shirt is lame, but I can appreciate it when someone adds to their wardrobe." If I’m honest the Bon Jovi shirt may have played a more minor role in that small interaction than I thought. After day dreaming for an hour, the final bell of the day rang and so I packed up my backpack and noticed she was gone, but not the notebook. It took awhile for me to decide to try and catch up to her to return it, because I had to plan out what I'd say to her if I DID catch up to her. I went through many options, "When you fell from heaven did this come with you?", "Now that I returned your notebook, do you plan on returning the heart you stole from me?", if you thought those were bad, I also thought about just throwing it at her and hiding. After coming up with 34 more different greetings and much deliberation, I ended up going with option 26, “Sorry, I think you left this in the library.” I sprinted out of there, notebook in hand and by the time I got out of the building she had already driven off. Defeated, I sat down on the bench and pondered on its contents. Out of curiosity, I turned to the page I saw her decorating in the library and started reading. The paragraphs I saw were date scenarios, lots of variety, from bungee jumping to a night at the opera. The bullet points were what she thinks are my best qualities. The table wasn't a table, but a list of the pros and cons of us going out. Then, there was a written letter... "Dear kid who I see in the library all the time, Thanks for trying to return my notebook. Sorry I was in a rush... winky face. Call me so we can figure out when I can get it back." Then at the end of the page, in very colorful text. "You live for the fight when it’s all that you’ve got." My favorite Bon Jovi lyric.
Somewhat of an old piece I wrote, with some updates here and there. I originally wrote this piece for a workshop I attended at the Texas Thespians festival. The workshop was for monologue writing and we were given somewhat of a prompt. The idea was for us to create parts and exchange them and then build a story from there. We were given a descriptive sentence, the first sentence of this piece. As well as a quote and an object that had to have significance in the story. My quote being the lyric and the object being the notebook. It was a fun exercise and the original version was much smaller in length, for better or for worse.
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